A Stalemate on the River:How Politics and the Climate are Eroding the Colorado River

The Colorado River system stretches from Wyoming to Mexico, supplying water to Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and California and together they are known as the basin states. These states, countries, and Indian tribes are held together by a century old law that split up the rivers water flows. The Colorado River system is at 38% of capacity. By the end of 2023 we are projected to be at 31%. We are strolling towards an impasse with no plan for how to maneuver around it.

Reservoirs are used to help with the seasonality of supply as we pull a relatively steady amount of water year round and rainfall typically happens in the fall and winter. During the winter snow runoff and rain flows into the river more than states demand. In the case of the Hoover Dam this excess water is stored for later use and for the generation of electricity.

Laws have inhibited solutions to stop major drops in capacity from their highs. These highs were recorded before the beginning of an over 20-year consecutive drought that has plagued the Colorado Basin. During this time the basin states and the federal governments of the US and Mexico have not been able to reach an agreement on further cuts since the 1922 Colorado River Compact until the past few months. This is the most senior water law and has not been updated since it was signed. It states that you can pull as much water as you want if the water flows through your land. The law expires in 2026 which puts the deadline too late to come to a new deal. At current rates there would be no more water in the system. Major cuts have recently been projected to come across California even after a recent plan to reduce their water below the mandated rate was passed. In almost every party’s defense they have a rational claim that they were treated unfairly and have a claim to increased future water resources. Everyone wants a bigger share of the shrinking pie.

The basin states are on the verge of experiencing an unprecedented water crisis due to the confluence of multiple factors, including long-standing practices that have depleted available water, a 20-year drought, population increases that raise the demand for water and political stagnation. A drought is a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period, resulting in a water shortage. The Colorado Basin has been dealing with a drought for over 20 years. Over this time critical storage has been depleted. Since we have been in a drought we have not seen meaningful legislation to address the issues. Water is continuing to be pulled at rates that are simply too high. This added strain is being felt primarily in reservoirs. Both lake Powel and Mead are at historical lows. These lows haven’t been seen since the reservoirs were first filled. In other words our last drops of water are being removed. We have been routinely overusing water from the water system for decades. The issue is the prolonged drought means our overuse is having real consequences (Politico Water Crisis 2022) and the most powerful law was written a century ago before the country looks the way it does today.

The current system for water rights established in 1922 is no longer relevant and desperately needs to be rewritten with Nevada being a prime example of why. When the 1922 Colorado River Compact was passed, Las Vegas was 11 years old and had one school. It was far from the city we know today and has had to be conscious ever since. Even though it houses a multimillion person population and has large water displays outside hotels, Nevada only receives 1.8% of the Colorado River System’s water (). They are able to make due with less. Nevada offers some hope that conservation is possible at scale if the population has no choice (Politico Water Cuts 2022).

Nevada isn’t the only state to experience a large population boom. Other states that have grown rapidly, are also struggling with their legacy allotments such as Utah and Arizona. This has led to Nevada, Utah, and Arizona shouldering a comparatively large portion of the water cutbacks in recent years, as it was stated to in 1922 they would be the first to cut back. Farmers are currently taking the largest hit, but cannot continue to shoulder so much of the burden. Farmers are in a situation where their business are being fundamentally disrupted. It is not a seamless transition to plant less crops as many farmers purchase seed and fertilizer in months in advance. The risk in the farming business has increased due to disruptions and uncertainty. This question of uncertainty has and most likely will continue to impact most decision making or the lack of it. With a diminished supply water for farmers will not be able to operate at all or as efficiency as the range of crops and where crops can be grown shrinks creating job and business losses. In California alone there are 420,000 people employed and it accounts for 12% of agriculture production. Small disruptions will affect many. This can be seen on the extremes as, “last year, they fallowed about 400,000 acres (about 6% of 2018 acreage)” (Person et al., 2022). These dynamics are predicted to be accentuated in the future.

It is predicted that the populations of the basin states will continue to grow and naturally demand more water, but the magnitude is unkown. The water is vital to major populations centers such as Denver, Phoenix and Los Angeles and in total 40 million people. This number is estimated to grow between 20% and 80% in the next 60 years (Partlow 2022). This wide of a spread makes it difficult for projections and lawmakers to settle on the perfect number. The water is also used for agriculture, hydropower, municipalities, and outdoor water use. The river’s varied use is part of the issue of splitting up the water. Many stakeholders within each state voice their opinions and have pull within their states to argue for a better deal. Lawmakers incentives are not set up to deal with an everyone lose situation. It also happens to be a situation where the longer a solution hasn’t been found, the harder it becomes to resolve.

In the case of Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, we are about to feel the first effects of lack of water. While farmers have started to feel effects, the general consumer has not. Lake Mead is particularly important because its water is used to run the Hoover Dam and generate electricity for millions. Currently the reservoir has been depleted significantly. Last year it had 200 feet of water before the dam would need to be scaled down. This year it stands at 41 feet (Bureau of Reclamation 2022). This could effect energy prices if the dam is not refilled which won’t happen until this current drought ends or major cuts are introduced.

The drought is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Predicting the future of our current one and potential future droughts is difficult due to imprecise data over the last 125 years and the affects global warming will have. That being said there have been both more and less severe droughts in the past. The drought itself is not necessarily due to global warming. It has been argued that global warming has made the drought more severe than it otherwise would be. It is difficult to precisely quantify global warmings impacts are but weather like this has been seen in the past and can be analyzed. One thing we can do to predict the future is look back through history to determine how unusual a drought we are in.

Records show that we are in a common drought for the region. The climate also is somewhat random and extreme weather events took place far before we produced too many hydrocarbons. The drought conditions have been made more severe by climate change as more heat causes more water to evaporate and less snow falls and is replaced by rain. Rain does not get collected as efficiently as snow runoff does so it will be hard for current flows to be maintained. Next year there is a 94% chance we will still be in this drought. Only an abnormally wet season would pull us out of the drought. We can infer that the conditions might persist long enough to impact the Hoover Dam. The drought will eventually end. By then we might be living in a new normal. Over the next 50 years we have a 50% chance of being in a five year or longer drought in any year. This means that these drought conditions are more or less the status quo till the end of the century rather than an aberration (Partlow 2022). More specific predictions come with far more uncertainty.

There is a lot of uncertainty when determining what will happen in the far into the future from a supply and demand perspective especially if you have to break it down by state. Important variables such as population size, population movement, laws and their effectiveness, and weather are all necessary pieces to a forecast in this case. To add complexity bordering territories are competing for future people and their investment. Uncertainty is hard to legislate with because exact numbers need to be agreed on and measures need to have their intended effects.

We observe that the states are struggling to reduce their usage at all, let alone cut their usage. California has lowered their consumption, but as a whole they are pulling similar amounts of water from the system. Their negotiations have apparently stalled with water rights being hard to negotiate. Some states in the Colorado River Basin have implement restrictions on water use but the net effect is far too low. Without California agreeing to major cuts, the other states have little to no incentive to negotiate (Politico Water Cuts 2022). Because the issue is deteriorating so quickly California is forecasting that it will need to implement mandatory cuts in the future. Arizona Senator Kelly has proposed denying funds to the Salton Sea. The Salton Sea is a body of water that sits over carcinogens which have slowly started to become exposed as water levels decreased making the land inhospitable (Ehlers, 2018). This situation is evolving quickly as more prominent politicians are focused on the issue.

Temporary solutions are being used already. This includes paying farmers not to plant and lawmakers are readying bills to pay for this plan. While this might be a necessary measure, it is not a problem that is likely to get better than today. This might create another long-term expensive problem. Farmers may have to permanently relocate from some areas that are no longer able to support water intensive crops. A process that would happen faster if allowed to occur naturally. Either farming needs to relocate or lower their output, but there is no other option due to the scale of farming in the US. Farmers are already leaving farmland fallow and the percentage of fallow land will need to increase as more cuts are enforced. There are other reasons today farmers are leaving fields fallow such as the cost of materials and fertilizer so it might be difficult to pay everyone fairly. At some point it will no longer be possible for states to support farmers who cannot be water efficient. The crops grown in the desert are an issue too. The crops are often highly water intensive.

The federal government has unsuccessfully encouraged states to deal with the problem on their own. To help fight the drought the US government advised that there should be a reduction of water being pulled from the river of 2 million acre feet (maf) a year. Since the turn of the century we have been overdrawing the river by 1.2 maf year. Since the advise was given over the past two years we have been overusing 1.8 maf a year. It is pretty clear that asking nicely to cut back and negotiate is doing nothing (Parlow 2022).

If anything the lack of action gives the states more impetus to try and secure more water. Both Arizona and California are working on plans to pull water from higher in the river by building water pipelines (Dunphey, 2022). It seems abundantly clear that states are more focused on making sure they protect their share rather than the supply.

The US department of interior have stated they will step in and pass laws if no consensus is found, however their stated deadline to find consensus has passed, and no action has been taken (Politico Water Crisis 2022). This leaves the states to continue to fight it out in multiple arenas. There needs to be an independent arbitrator to determine the fairest plan for the future. With a population that is supposed to grow by 9–35m in the next 50 years decisions need to be made now on water rights as we are already overusing. Based on the evidence we have from years of political stagnation on the topic is the situation is likely to get worse not better. Likely it will take a serious government and media cooperation to convince citizens that this is necessary, while they push cuts on the area.

Often when we consider solutions to climate change we look to technology to bail us out. So, can we look to technology here? History would tell us emphatically no. There have been few major water projects in the world that didn’t primarily rely on gravity to move it over large areas. Water is difficult to move because of its chemistry. It’s surface tension works like a grip on any material even as its being pushed. There are some solutions with early industrial desalination plants sprouting up. Desalination takes seawater and converts it into clean water for human consumption. It is currently far too expensive for industrial, hydropower, or farming. Relying on desalination would push costs onto the consumer as it is energy intensive to pump the water and expensive to set up and keep running.

It is currently in its infancy, but the industry will continue to face problems as salt water is naturally corrosive. Any water produced by a desalination plant, at first, would be more expensive than regular water. There are a few plants operating in California already and money has been flowing into new desalination solutions and projects. A recent $1.4 project that was intended to service 400,000 people was denied because of issues with marine life and the idea that the water produced would not be for low income consumers (Person 2022). Any benefits would come at the cost of marine life today. While the bodies acting on behalf of marine life stated that there are better options, those options might be five to ten years away. The door was left open for future plants, however turning down a proposal that took half a decade and over $100m, might not court other prospective investors.

We can look to Saudi Arabia to see how a country deals with a depleted local supply. Saudi Arabia has gone as far as to fly planes over clouds and dropping salt into them, creating rainfall. The Saudi’s have started desalination with 50% of their water supply coming from that source after overdrawing water for decades. Recently they have been purchasing American land to grow the same crop, Alfalfa, that caused their own crisis. They then ship it back to because it is cheaper. They are leveraging a similar regulatory environment that permits unlimited water use (Cleveland-Stout, 2022).

The future is highly uncertain. Right now we are on track to destroy our water supply which will impact our future ability to drink water, feed ourselves, and supply our homes and businesses with electricity. Our systematic overuse of water and its affects will have to end. It is unclear if we will cut enough consumption quick enough to keep the system running or if we will let it run out. There are local economic interests at play that make it difficult for governments to implement tough cutting regulations due to resistance from those with vested interests. This makes it even harder for governments to mandate early cuts since they may not have the necessary political support required for such measures. Therefore, while mandating earlier and more stringent cuts would be ideal from an environmental perspective, the odds are against that outcome.